


But Not Tonight

by cityonfire



Category: Original Work
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-10
Updated: 2019-02-10
Packaged: 2019-10-25 08:47:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17721977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cityonfire/pseuds/cityonfire
Summary: Death isn't always the beginning. Sometimes it's just the end.





	But Not Tonight

**Author's Note:**

> I took Tam Lin and ran with it, because I'm a shameless hack.

    It rained the day of Tom’s funeral, which he would have hated. I can hear him saying, in that nervous, apologetic way of his, “oh, you needn’t bother, I would hate to inconvenience you.” But of course I had to bother, and so there I was, sitting on the cold wooden bench as someone I didn’t know--probably one of Tom’s family members--spoke about what a good son he had been, and such a wonderful brother. Wonderful my ass, I thought, they hated him, and looked across the aisle at my friend Sebastian, who looked at me with an awful sympathetic look in his eyes.

    Not once during the speeches did they mention me, and truly I might have left then and there if not for Sebastian’s grounding presence. The days since Tom’s death had been a blur, and standing over the open pit felt unbelievably surreal. They were shoveling dirt onto his coffin now, and when I stepped forward to ladle my shovelful over Tom, his family gave me dirty looks. Funny, it didn’t sting like it usually would.

    His mother wept, theatrical tears mixing with her mascara to run blackly down her face. I don’t think she actually gave a damn, but the old lady knew how to put on a performance. His father stood wooden faced, not a flicker of emotion crossing his face. Did he regret all the things he’d done, all the things he’d said? I remembered nights with Tom’s head in my lap, stroking his hair as he sobbed over all the things his father had said. “Finn,” he’d say, “why does he hate me so much?” I never did have an answer for that, my own father having up and died years before, but he at least had never disowned me.

    The funeral ended as all things end, and I instinctively reached for Tom, but of course he wasn’t there, so I reached for Sebastian instead. He steered me out by the shoulder and sat me down in his car. “Jim and I want you to stay by our place tonight,” he said, “so you don't have to spend the night alone in your apartment," and I nodded mutely.

    He put a cassette on, and Robert Smith's voice filled the car. _It doesn't matter if we all die_ … He gave me a mortified look and switched out the tape. Classical music this time, Bach or Beethoven or something, nice and neutral and safe.

           We didn’t talk during the car ride, streetlights flicking by, one two three and there goes another one. The warm yellow light played over the leather of the seat, and I began to weep. “What am I going to do now,” I whimpered, and Sebastian reached one hand out from the steering wheel and settled it on my arm.

    It was still damp out, and so we hurried up the walkway and into his apartment. He put some leftovers in the oven and handed me a glass of wine. I drank it in three gulps, barely tasting it. Walking to the kitchen, I took the bottle and refilled my glass. He gave me a concerned look, which I ignored, and refilled my glass, again and again and again. Tonight was Halloween, and all I could think about were our lovely plans, which were never going to happen now.

    Sebastian’s blurred face peered down at me. “I’m putting you to bed,” he said. I reached up and tried to pull him down into a kiss, and he gently detached himself. “No, Finn, you’re drunk and grieving and I’m in a relationship. Go to bed.”

    “I don’t want to go to bed, Seb, it's so empty without him.”

    Sebastian’s face kind of crumpled at that. “Oh, honey,” he said in that horrible sympathetic voice, and then we cried together until I fell asleep.

    I woke up in the middle of the night, the moon cold and silvery across the wall of the living room. It was very bright, shadows painted across its whiteness. You half expected a witch to fly across its looming face, but of course witches don't actually ride broomsticks and anyway I’d completely lost faith in anything magical the night Tom died. The room seemed very large without him. I think this was the first night I’d been properly alone since the car crash, and I didn’t much like it. I could still feel Tom's presence, like he was in another room, and to be honest I half expected him to come through the door, apologizing for all the confusion and kissing away my tears.

    I had a sudden urge to visit him. Sebastian had left the car keys on the table--it was Jim’s car really but they shared it--and they might chew me out in the morning but they’d probably understand. I scooped the keys up from where they sat next to the remains of last night’s dinner and grabbed my coat. The latch clicked when I unlocked it, and the door creaked, but Sebastian and Jim slept on, undisturbed in the peace and security of each other’s company. For a moment I hated them for it, that they still had this precious, beautiful thing that I’d lost. Then I hated myself for that feeling. They were so good to me, always had been.

    The car didn’t want to start, and even then only begrudgingly. I drove quickly, recklessly even. Maybe a part of me hoped I’d crash. I don’t know. Tom used to hate my driving. He would never say anything, but he'd look at me in that way of his, all concerned and disapproving. “You'll kill yourself, you know. Driving like that,” he would say. Joke's on him, though, he was the one dead and I was still here. I won't lie, I was a little disappointed to arrive at the cemetery still alive.

    The cemetery was locked but it was small and the gate was pretty easy to scale. I found Tom’s grave quickly; its soil not yet leveled by rain and time, still standing in a forlorn mound. I sat down heavily and looked at the gravestone. I hadn’t chosen it. _Thomas Lin, 1964-1989_ , it read. _Beloved son and brother, gone but not forgotten_ . He had been younger than me, only twenty-five. It wasn’t fair, I thought, it simply _was not fair_ that his family--his fucking family, who threw him out of the house, who hated him and all but disowned him, got to put themselves on his tombstone. And I, I didn’t get a mention. He meant more to me than he ever did to them, and all I had was this midnight visit.

    “I miss you, you idiot, you know that? I never thought it would be a car crash; Jesus, Tom, what a stupid way to die.” He didn’t say anything. It was just me after all, with maybe a few crickets that hadn’t died of the autumn cold. I don’t know what else I had expected. His arms around my shoulders, telling me everything would be okay? It wouldn’t be okay, not ever again. Just a week ago we were dancing around our apartment to Depeche Mode, and now here we were, one of us six feet under and the other wishing he were the same. I had always felt we were living on borrowed time, but I guess I never expected it to run out so soon.

    I was crying, the ugly kind of crying where dignity is more of a wistful memory than anything, and I didn’t really care.

    I was still crying when I heard the music, an eerie flow of sound unlike anything I’d ever heard. I could almost touch it, and in that moment I nearly forgot my grief. I rose, joints creaking with the strain, and followed it to its source.

    Well, I must have been more drunk than I thought, because the side of the cemetery hill was open. Just like that, gaping open like a wound. Tom used to take a knife to himself--it hurt to think of him in the past tense--well anyway he’d cut himself when things got too crazy, after he’d spoken to his dad or when he lost his job--they never said it was because he was gay, but we both knew that was the reason. He’d cut himself pretty bad, too, and the edges of his skin would yawn open, letting his blood out into the open where it had no business being. The hill reminded me of nothing more than that. I’d find him sitting on the bed looking ashamed at the reddened sheets, drying in their newly rusted stiffness, and the red would run down his arm, and the gape on his shoulder was the gape on the hill.

    The music called me. _Finn,_ it said, it called my name and it promised me so many things. Peace, and happiness, and love, and I swear in the midst of the whispering strings and laughing harp I could hear Tom’s voice mixed in, impossibly fair and alive. What could I do, what could I do but follow? I did, and sometimes I hate myself for it. Hope is the cruelest thing in the world; I learned my lesson that night.

    I stepped through the gape, right through that open wound of an entrance, and found my feet damp in a warm stream. The water was crystal, and the scent of pollen hung heavy and lazy in the air. It was also daylight, but somehow that made perfect sense to me. I looked around for Tom-- _can you believe this place, huh?_ \--but I couldn’t find him. The forest I stood in was oddly quiet, save for the occasional rustle in the underbrush of something I hoped was an animal.

    A soft whimper startled me, and I turned to see a woman tangled in a rosebush. The thorns had snaked around her arms and legs, and caught at the antlers on her head. She saw me looking, and smiled slowly. She was the most lovely woman I had ever seen, and for a moment I forgot all about Tom.

    She cast her eyes sideways at me, and when she spoke my heart nearly stopped beating. “Ah, mortal man,” she said, “pray release me from my prison.” Blood dripped down her arms where the thorns tore her skin. A trickle dripped down her face, and she darted her tongue out and licked it away.

    I stepped forward clumsily. “Of course,” I said. “Anything.”

    The thorns snagged my skin, and I draped my shirt over my hands for protection. It still hurt, but I would have ripped out my own beating heart for this woman, and so I didn’t stop until she stood free.

    “I thank you,” she said, then leaned in close. “I know what you want, and if you have the mettle you shall have it.”

    “Um,” I said.

    “Your lover, he is but newly passed, and tonight is Samhain. Tonight the dead ride with Faerie to wherever it is you mortals go after you die. Ah, your lives are so brief! It would move me to tears, but in truth does one mourn a mayfly?”

    Her presence was so overwhelming, I could scarcely understand what she was saying, but I understood enough. “You’re saying I can see Tom again?”

    “Ah ah ah, mortal man, I’m saying you can take him back with you. When you see him riding by, pull him down and hold him fast. If you but loose your hold for a second, you will lose him forever, but hold him tight and he shall be yours once more. You have done me a good turn, and thus you are repaid.”

    She took my head in both her hands, and kissed my forehead chastely. “Your lives are so sad,” she said. “So much hardship, and so much sorrow. Keep your wits about you, for they ride at the setting of the sun. I am for the road now, for I have my own business to tend to.”

    No one had ever, I felt, looked as grim and terrifying as she had in that moment, and I rather pitied whoever it was who had tied her in that bush.

    I was alone again, and for the first time in days that did not hurt so deeply. The empty pit in my chest felt smaller. I had hope, for however long that would last.

    Time, I think, moves different in--well, wherever this place was. Call it Faerie, call it the Otherworld, call it a particularly vivid hallucination. Midday moved fluidly into twilight faster than time had any business doing, and almost before I noticed, evening fell upon me like a bad thought creeping across my mind.

    Footsteps, then horses, and the jingling of bit and bell. They were nearly here, and I was ready. Oh god I was ready, for I was not willing to imagine the possibility of failure. Laughing voices, and a few wails, and then they were upon me.

    Horse after horse rode by, each rider more stern and beautiful than the last. Mingled among them were more ordinary faces, remarkable only in their waxy cast and vacant eyes. I could not see Tom. All these faces, and my Tom not among them.

    And then there he was, on a white horse, draped in a shroud. He would have loved that, he always did have a morbidly romantic streak to him. The woman from the thorn bush rode beside him, dressed in rich velvets and silks, her face sorrowful and knowing. I reached out to Tom, but he did not take my hand. I lunged forward desperately, and grabbed him by the arm, solid and cold to the touch. I wrapped him in my arms. “I have you, I have you, I have you. I’ll never let you go again, I swear.”

    He shook his head mutely, and then his body melted into a asp. It writhed and hissed, but still I held on. The snake twisted and elongated, growing fur and fangs. It dissolved into a bear, which roared and shook its head, but I tightened my grip. I could not let go, I could not fail him. The bear turned into a dog, which attempted to bite my hand, but still it could not break loose. It shrunk in on itself then, glowed into a white hot coal, and I howled my pain to the darkening skies, and I did not let go. I was dimly aware of the fae gathered stone still, watching me, but I did not care. My hands blackened and charred, and I clutched that coal to my heart.

    Finally it pulsed in my fist and sprouted feathers. A blue jay sat between my now whole hands, its little heart pitter pattering against my fingers. When it spoke, it spoke with Tom’s voice.

    “Finn,” it said, “you have to let me go. It’s my time. If I go back with you, it can never be the same. I’ll wait for you, but Finn my love, you need to open your hands.”

    I screamed then, guttural and raw, shrieking out my pain and sorrow and disbelief, all of my hurt and rage and betrayal. I screamed until my throat went raw and I had no more sound left inside me. And then I opened my hands.

    The bird fluttered to the ground, and blurred into Tom's familiar form. “Finn.” He took both my hands in his. He wasn’t wearing the shroud anymore, just a simple t shirt and black jeans, with a smudge of eyeliner around his eyes. He looked like himself, and my heart just about broke then and there. Here’s something they don’t tell you: it fucking hurts, a physical pain like a glass shard in your chest.

    Tom leaned forward and hugged me close. I breathed in the scent of him, wrapped my arms around him and pulled him closer. His heart wasn’t beating, and his skin was cool to the touch, but he was solid, and there. “Tom,” I sniffled, like a lost child, and he kissed me for the last time, slow and sweet.

    “Hey now, Finn, you’ll be okay. I’ll be there waiting, you know I will. I love you,” and with that he climbed onto his horse with a grace he never had when he was alive, and off he rode, to wherever it is we poor dumb mortals go after we die. I couldn’t cry after that. I was too empty for tears. I felt a hand on my shoulders--the thorn bush woman again--like a benediction, before she too rode away.

    I found myself outside the hill, the gaping opening gone. I was by myself again. The walk to the car was the longest walk I ever took, but when I checked my watch it told me barely any time had gone by at all. I drove back to Sebastian’s apartment in silence, unsure if I had dreamt it all.

    Sebastian didn’t realize I’d borrowed the car when he and Jim woke up the next morning, and I wasn’t about to tell him. I feel bad about that. He and Jim took such good care of me in the immediate aftermath of Tom’s death, and I’m afraid I didn’t repay them very well.

    I didn’t wait for them to wake up though. When I got back to their place, I wrote them a note and went back to my apartment to stay the rest of the night. The emptiness didn’t scare me as much anymore. I didn’t feel his ghost lurking in every corner, more like memories of him now. It hurt, of course it did, but it wasn’t the same.

    I felt dazed, like my reality was bleeding thin around the edges. There were stories, told around campfires and whispered in alleys, of people who made their way to Faerie. They usually never came back, and as the truth of what had happened sunk in, I felt very cold. The mere fact of my continued existence was a miracle. I began to shake. There was a bottle of Valium on the nightstand--Tom’s, but he wouldn’t be needing it now--so I swallowed a pill, my mouth dry.

    I stumbled to my bed, larger and colder than it used to be, and curled in on myself. I would forget about everything, about my loneliness and sorrow and the terrifying thing that had happened in the cemetery. For just this one moment, here in the dark, I would let myself forget. I fell asleep with my hand reaching for someone who was no longer there.

    The sun came up, as it always does, indifferent to our suffering. A blue jay flew down from a tree branch and perched on the window sill. It looked at me, and I looked back at it. I walked over to my record player, rifled through the records, and put the needle down gently.

    The sounds of Depeche Mode filtered through the living room. I danced alone, my arms cradling the empty air, and outside, the blue jay sang along.

 


End file.
